I've written about Brazil pre-Lula and post-Lula and spent the last five years covering all aspects of the country for Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal and Barron's. Meanwhile, for an undetermined amount of time, and with a little help from my friends, I will be parachuting primarily into Brazil, Russia, India and China. But will also be on the look out for interesting business stories and investing ideas throughout the emerging markets.

Obama Gets Left Behind

From drone attacks to Wall Street regulation, President Obama has been unable to please the left wing voters of his party.

Come on now. Is Obama really a “psychopathic megalomaniac”?

I learned of Obama’s problems today. Not from Ron Paul supporters. Not from Glenn Beck‘s Drudge wanna-be news site The Blaze. I read about Obama’s psychosis from left wing Democrats.

Everyday I get emails from former members of Move On, a pro-Democratic Party group that was famously active during the build-up to the Iraq War in 2003. They’re complaining about one man: President Obama.

In these emails, one thing is apparent. When it comes to the left wing liberals, Obama is being left behind.

The left was mostly raptured into political heaven four years ago when they elected Obama on bended knee. He spoke about things dear to their hearts: closing Guantanamo Bay. Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Getting tough on bankers.

Guantanamo is still open. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, but the military presence remains. (Smacks of imperialism. That’s something the left hates as much as libertarians do.) Then there’s the president’s bit about getting tough on bankers. Where has the White House come down hard on Wall Street? Fuhgeddaboudit. This is New York!

One anti-Obama Saturday in my inbox:

Re: Write-in Kermit the Frog!

If being a ‘pragmatist’ or a ‘realist’ means choosing only amongst evils, count us OUT. Obama betrayed the American voters who expected he would not gut the US Constitution. Both parties are the same. And, in a world of infinite possibilities we choose not between the lesser of two evils. In fact, those of us who are not into denial and work at the human rights front lines prefer to face the Republican snake head-on then the confused and gutless Democrat chameleon whining about being a progressive when they are NOT.” — Ezili Danto, human rights lawyer at the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

Re: Obama is a psychopath; reminds me of Stalin

There’s a cancer in the presidency called Barack Obama. We have a psychopathic megalomaniac occupying the White house who could be compared to Nero, Caligula, Stalin, or Pol Pot in his disdain for human life. He and his coven of other like minded DC psychopaths and sociopaths are on a murdering spree and like a third world dictator Obama can have someone and their family (including you) executed or blasted to smithereens with a thumbs up or down. This is sickening to me. They are so blase about murdering that they refer to the hit list photos as “baseball cards”. Killing is a game or a sport to them. There is a “cancer on the Presidency” and that cancer has metastasized throughout Washington DC. It was there before Obama arrived but he brought a whole new and virulent strain with him. Every time there is a shameful incident or embarrassing event perpetrated by “a few bad apples” we hear from the DC psychopaths that “That is not who we are”. They are incorrect. It is who they are in DC. It is not who we the real everyday thinking feeling Americans are. I certainly am not one of the people to be included in their cumulative we.” — Alexander Cockburn, writing for his online publication Counterpunch. Alexander is also a columnist at The Nation, though I have a hard time believing this missive will make it passed Katrina Vanden Heuvel. Alex is a firebrand. I’ve written for him once or twice, and he was kind enough to comment on my reporting about the Iraq War for The Boston Globe in 2003 in his Beat the Devil column. This sounds like Alex being Alex, alright. Gotta love his fire.

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Let’s hope November IS the end. After signing the executive order granting himself single-handed power over pretty much everything during a national state of emergency (of which Barry has the sole authority to call), we cannot put it past him to do just that and suspend the elections.

That’s how dictators are created. So how do we the People deal with that? Do we trust the military not to fire on civilians attempting to restore the country from a coup?

the bottom line is the liberals failed to test or evaluate who obama is and was, they got caught up in a euphoria, basically they were manipulated by the liberal media and controlled, they never looked into who this guy was.

But the thing is this, if you are a liberal and you think obama sucks then guess what you are never going to be happy with an american politician, obama is a socialist plain and simple he has made no secret of this he is as far to the left as a president will ever be so if you don’t like him and you are liberal then you just can’t be satisfied and you aren’t realistic.

I think another side of this is this fact, obama will lose to romney so now the left wing nuts are starting to comfortably distance themselves from obama to protect their fragile feelings, oh well obama was no good anyways, i would disagree if you are liberal then obama is your guy and your ideas and liberal principles will always fail in the united states of america, we don’t want socialism in fact america hates socialism.

Obama is a 90s Republican. Even his healthcare bill was promoted by Gingrich, Bob Dole and the Heritage Foundation. Despite the fact that he’s pushed mostly center-right policies, I’m still going to vote for him since Romney and the Republicans scare the crap out of me. They have nothing to offer except the same awful Bush policies that got us into this mess.

I think you spend a little time drinking the right-wing koolaid. You should check out something other than Big(whatever).com and Drudge because you sound rather foolish.

So true Jayce. They like to call themselves liberals but yet they are all for taking away freedoms (unless it has to do with sex) and are into big government controlling the minute details of our lives. Even a cup over 16oz must be outlawed, for our own good of course. Liberals can be equated with the worst of the worse. I am sure Stalin and Mao would agree with them. Throw them out . “liberals” are the cancer on the nation.

Hardly. It was called “Hillarycare” back then and we conservatives stopped it cold. Yet it was no where near as invasive to our liberties as 0bamacare is. You cannot call 0bama a ’90′s Republican and have it hold any water.

90′s Republicans BALANCED the budget and CUT the deficit. Hell, Gingrich and the House Republicans gave (forced) Clinton that “surplus” you claim Bush wasted. 0bama has taken Bush’s last deficit and EXPANDED it on an order of magnitude of 10 TIMES ($156 Billion vs. $1.5 TRILLION). Clinton was able to work with the 90′s Republicans. 0bama has threatened to veto ANY bill that comes from the Republican-controlled House.

Don’t give any of us who actually were THERE in the 90′s any crap about 0bama being a “90′s Republican”. It simply makes you look foolish.

The problem with today’s politics is that no one can even agree on facts therefore never, ever, able to find solution to any problems.

A myth perpetuated by politicians of the 90s of both parties and the lazy press is that during the Clinton presidency the US had balanced its budgets and created surpluses. The next logical myth is that Bush spent those surpluses.

This is blatantly wrong. The Treasury’s web site keeps a running tab of the US’s national debt by fiscal year. On that web site the national debt during the Clinton years increased every year. There was no surplus. Therefore Bush did not spend a surplus.

I concluded two things, one, Washington politicians can play with their budget to create the illusions that benefits themselves and their party and second, that the press will run with that illusion as fact.

We as a country will never solve any issue unless we first have a ‘come to Jesus’ moment and figure out what the facts are… Then we can create solutions to those issues. This may be why the US government is so dysfunctional.